Joynes Literary Series

2014 – 2015 Events

Events are free and open to ALL UT students unless otherwise noted

A Reading by Poet Terrance Hayes

The Mary Lu Joynes Endowment in the Plan II Honors Program and L.L. and Ethel E. Dean Endowment in the School of Undergraduate Studies will host a reading by Terrance Hayes on Thursday, March 5th, at 7 p.m. in the Joynes Reading Room (CRD 007).

Hayes is a 2014 MacArthur Fellow. His most recent poetry collection is Lighthead (Penguin 2010), winner of the 2010 National Book Award and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and Hurston-Wright award. Hayes’ other honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a profile on the PBS Newshour with Jim Leher, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.

His first book, Muscular Music (Tia Chucha Press, 1999) won both a Whiting Writers Award and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. His second book, Hip Logic (Penguin 2002), was a National Poetry Series selection, and a finalist for both the Los Angeles Time Book Award and the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. Wind In a Box (Penguin 2006), a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award finalist, was named one of the best books of 2006 by Publishers Weekly,whose reviewer wrote: “in his hip, funny, yet no less high-stakes third collection, Hayes solidifies his reputation as one of the best poets – African American or otherwise – now writing.”

Hayes was born in Columbia, South Carolina in 1971, and educated at Coker College where he studied painting and English and was an Academic All-American on the men’s basketball team. After receiving his MFA from the University of Pittsburgh in 1997, he taught in southern Japan, Columbus, Ohio, and New Orleans, Louisiana. Hayes returned to Pittsburgh in 2001 and taught for twelve years at Carnegie Mellon University. He joined the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh as a full professor of English in the fall of 2013. How To Be Drawn, his new collection of poems, is forthcoming from Penguin in 2015.

A review of Lighthead in the New York Times stated: “Hayes’s fourth book puts invincibly restless wordplay at the service of strong emotions.”